


you know i find myself when you're not around

by boxedblondes



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Five Stages of Grief, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Eve Polastri, POV Second Person, eve rights: the fic, this is just my attempt to fill all the eve-sized plot holes between s2 and s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24887152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxedblondes/pseuds/boxedblondes
Summary: She aimed for your heart. Isn’t that romantic?Eve's life goes up in flames. She tries to find something salvageable in the wreckage.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 106
Kudos: 216





	1. i. no white noise when i go under

**Author's Note:**

> Oh what's this? Another KE fic from yours truly? And it's second person again?
> 
> This is very much a work in progress, but the idea's been percolating in my brain for weeks now so I had to actually start writing before it consumed me. I am completely at the mercy of my own creative inspiration, so this fic will be updating at completely random intervals (but probably very quickly, don't worry about that).
> 
> Specific warnings/notes will be at the beginning of each chapter. Please let me know if you'd like something tagged differently. Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this chapter for blood and mentions of murder/violence/death. Takes place directly after the events of the s2 finale.
> 
> Chapter title from "Knew You" by Kailee Morgue

Something most people don’t know: Getting shot isn’t actually all that painful. Not at first. 

Maybe you’ve seen too many movies, but you’d always assumed it would hurt like a bitch. Instead, it’s barely more than a bee sting – though there’s enough force behind it to knock you straight on your face. You hardly even hear the gunshot.

 _That’s it?_ you think to yourself, cheek against the sun-warmed earth. _That really wasn’t too bad_.

For a few moments, the shock of what just happened overpowers every other sensation, filling your head with white noise. Once the humming begins to fade, you realize she’s still there – a silent presence betrayed only by the sound of her breathing, deafening amidst the quiet of the ruins.

She stands there for a moment – watching you, presumably, for any sign of life – and you wonder if she’s considering putting a bullet in your head as well for good measure. The ground is hard and slightly sandy, hot enough from the morning sun to burn your skin. You take the pain and hold it close to you, focus on this pain and only _this_ pain. The longer you lie here, and the longer she stares at you, the more the hole in your chest starts to burn.

Eventually she walks away, heels clicking like some rapidly-fading metronome. Her steps are precise, measured, and you wonder what that says about her mental state. Did you really mean so little to her that shooting you dead in some hidden corner of a foreign country hasn’t affected her in the slightest? Or is she reeling, in shock, horrified at what she’s done? Has she put on a familiar mask and tucked her emotions away somewhere deep inside her?

She aimed for your heart. _Isn’t that romantic?_

Something warm and wet touches your hand and you flinch violently. The motion jostles something in your chest, reminding your body that it’s been horribly compromised. The pain, fully fledged now, burns and claws at you – a thing with teeth and fervor.

You open your mouth to scream but all that comes out is a sad little whimper. Your breaths are ragged, wheezing their way in and out of your raw, mangled chest. At some point you open your eyes and realize the warm, wet thing is your blood. It’s surprisingly sticky, a river of honey pouring out of your body.

A voice nudges at the back of your mind. It takes you a while to realize it’s your own thoughts. It takes a while longer to understand what it’s saying. _Phone. Phone._ Over and over, like some whispery old record. 

Do you have a phone? Where is it? Will your limbs even work if you try to move them? 

Your eyes have slipped shut again and for a moment you just float somewhere outside of yourself. How sad, you think, that it was all for nothing. Your life and your work and your place in the world. You’re going to die here, boiling under the sun, and nobody is going to find you until it’s too late. Will anybody even wonder where you are? Will anybody care?

You wonder if this is how Hugo felt when you left him bleeding into the hotel carpet. You wonder if this is karma, coming to collect its debt. Well, you think, it could be worse. Karma could be crueler. At least you’re not getting axed to death. That would surely be more painful than this.

By the time your vision starts to go a little spotty around the edges, you remember the phone is in your front pocket. It’s another several minutes before you manage to coordinate the movements necessary to get it out, inching it up towards your face with your good hand. 

The screen is cracked from when you fell, touchscreen glass no match for the weight of a body. The sun catches on the spiderweb splinters and turns them into diamonds of light. Your eyes burn from looking right at them.

Time begins to unravel after that, everything going fluid and wobbly. Your ears are ringing something awful and all you can see behind your eyelids is television static. _Phone_ , you think again, but you have no idea what that means.

In the vacancy of your mind, you see a tidal wave, dark and foreboding. _Is this my life?_ you think, in some place outside of thought. You always assumed this moment would be more like a slideshow or a series of faces. 

_Help me_ , you think, as the wave comes closer. You don’t know who you’re trying to talk to. All you know is you don’t want to be here when the water crashes down.

You want to close your eyes. Your eyes are closed. You can’t close your eyes.

The water, when it hits, is warm as blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think so far! [@boxedblondes](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/) <3


	2. I. why don't we full on pretend?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Once you get back out into the real world, you do your valiant best to pretend nothing ever happened. That your life hasn’t been torn brutally in two, a cliche Before and After._
> 
> Or, Eve tries to tell herself a different story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come get y'all wholesome Eve/Kenny interactions!!
> 
> Takes place somewhere between the events of 2x08 and 3x01. Warnings for mentions of blood/violence and a brief reference to Gemma's death
> 
> Chapter title from "Wild Roses" by Of Monsters and Men

**denial** /dəˈnīəl/ _n._

a defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality

The rest of the story is simple and serendipitous. It goes like this: a pair of American tourists stumble across you a little after noon, startled half to death by the truly staggering pool of blood surrounding your prone form. One of them calls 118 and the rest is just standard EMS protocol.

(In the hospital, you joke that it’s a good thing they were American. _Americans love to be the center of attention_ , you say. _If they were British, I’d_ really _be dead._

Nobody laughs. You wonder if it’s the language barrier.)

It takes three surgeries, two blood transfusions, and eight weeks of physical therapy to fix all the damage Villanelle has wrought upon you. Stuck in bed for most of this time, you memorize each part of your body the bullet damaged. Trapezius, rhomboid major, infraspinatus. Scapula, a few ribs, a mess of arteries and veins.

One of your doctors comments that you’re healing remarkably well for a woman of your age. You try to take it as a compliment.

The official story, handed down by some part of MI5 that actually still cares about keeping up appearances, is that you were mugged and shot in the back when you tried to run. _Like a coward_ , you think. 

Like there’s _anything_ cowardly about turning your back on a professional assassin, knowing somewhere deep inside yourself that she’s going to pull a gun on you. That she’s going to shoot you, and you’re probably going to die. No, there’s bravery in that – you’re self-aware enough to know this – and you hold the knowledge, that bright spark of truth, in a secret space behind your ribs.

You know you’re not a coward, and that’s enough to live on.

Still, the cover story gives you an easy lie to tuck yourself inside of. After a month or so, you can _almost_ trick yourself into really, truly believing it. You were just a clueless tourist, lost in Tivoli. You nearly lost your life over €15 and a punch card for a takeaway restaurant in South Kensington (as if some random Italian pickpocket would be able to find value in that). It’s a tragedy, a tipping point. Once you’re healed, you’ll be on a plane back to England to reconnect with your _terribly worried_ husband and reassemble the pieces of your normal, tedious little life.

It’s a good dream, a soft lie. And you’re going to believe it with every fiber of your body, reality be damned. 

Until one day, when your nurse announces you have a visitor and are you feeling well enough to see him? The _him_ throws you – “visitor” comes with all kinds of sinister connotations for you, and at first you’d been expecting Carolyn or, more likely, Villanelle come to finish the job. If it’s a _him_ , is it Niko? Did he really fly all the way to the outskirts of Rome to see you lying feeble in a hospital bed? 

It’s hard to fathom. When Kenny walks through the door instead, you think, _Okay, yeah. That makes a lot more sense_.

You’re so happy to see him, drunk on the relief of a familiar face after several weeks in a sea of strangers. The feeling is fleeting, though, as Kenny begins talking faster than you’ve ever heard him, dismantling your peaceful fantasy in several fell swoops.

He tells you about Niko, about Gemma. About Hugo, airlifted to London for treatment. ( _Lucky bastard_ , you think.) About the plot to sell you and Villanelle out, his role on the cleanup crew. About how his mum’s on thin ice with MI5, and how Konstantin’s fucked off somewhere, as has Villanelle.

“She’s probably not dead, though,” he adds. Like that’s something you really care about at the moment.

“I wish she was,” you say, made truthfully loquacious by pain meds and the shock of everything he’s told you.

He looks at you, eyebrows pinching together. “I thought… you liked her,” he says, hesitant.

“Kenny,” you say. “She shot me in the back.” It’s a good enough answer as any, and – Kenny being Kenny – he lets it go.

What you don’t say, no matter how desperately you want to: _It couldn’t have been her who killed Niko’s girlfriend. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave him to die._ You want to believe these things, but then you remember how she stabbed Bill to death on a nightclub dance floor. You remember the look in her eyes when you brought the axe down, over and over.

It’s easier to tell yourself a different version of events. Maybe, you surmise, Niko and that woman went to the storage unit for a late-afternoon tryst and got trapped there when they couldn’t get the door back open.

 _Then how did she die with a bag over her head?_ your rational mind asks. _How did Niko get knocked unconscious, so hard his brain was bleeding into his skull by the time they found him?_

Kenny tells you Niko’s been hospitalized (institutionalized, committed to a modern-day asylum). Kenny tells you he’s specifically asked not to see you, not for a very long time. Kenny tells you he sold the house – your own stupid fault for letting him be the sole signature on the lease – and most of your stuff is in storage. You love Kenny, love him to death, but there comes a point in the day where you want to beg him to _just stop talking_ because every new thing he says is more painful than the last. 

You tell him to take your shit and burn it.

“That’s not very environmentally-conscious,” he comments.

You stare at him in blank disbelief for a moment before realizing he’s making a joke. You force a laugh, too late. “Then donate it,” you say. “Whatever. I don’t want it anymore.”

(Some time later, when you’re in the process of moving into a tiny, depressing flat he’s found for you and managed to secure under an alias, you’ll find a cardboard box tucked faux-casually under the bed. After warily opening it, you’ll discover it contains several items from the house – family photographs, a few careworn paperbacks, one particular button-up shirt you used to wear to work when you actually cared about your job.

You have to sit on the floor for several minutes, eyes closed against the rush of emotion suddenly flooding your chest. _How do you deserve this?_ you wonder. In the weeks leading up to Rome, you were horrible to Kenny – you can admit that now, though it fills you with a regret so strong you almost choke on it – and yet he has never been nothing but kind to you. 

After everything, all of this, it seems he is the one true friend you have in the world.)

Once you get back out into the real world, you do your valiant best to pretend nothing ever happened. That your life hasn’t been torn brutally in two, a cliche Before and After.

You don’t have much in the way of savings, but MI5 is blessing you with a pension, given that you’ve been “injured in the line of duty.” Frankly, it’s insulting, feels like they’re just sending you a pity check in the mail every month. Some day you’ll get off your ass and find a real job, tell MI5 exactly where they can stick your pension, but for now you have no choice but to shut up and take what they’ll give you. You don’t particularly fancy being homeless at the moment.

You start visiting Niko on a regular basis. On the first of these visits, you mention your “mugging” and watch his face contort minutely through a series of emotions. The drugs they have him on keep him mostly subdued, and it’s only through years of knowing him that you’re able to detect his pain beneath the placid mask. 

He doesn’t comment on your story or try to contradict you. It is here, in this moment of complicit denial, that you realize your marriage is well and truly over. The old Niko would never have let you lie to yourself so easily. Or to him.

You don’t think about Villanelle; that is, you try very hard not to, and usually succeed. It’s especially easy the first couple months, with your gunshot wounds not yet scarred over. You learn very quickly that being discharged from the hospital doesn’t mean you’re actually _healed_ , just that you can be expected to hobble around your own house without keeling over. 

Everything hurts – _everything_. That’s another thing you’ve learned from this whole experience, that every little bit of the human body is connected in some unfathomable way. So when you fall asleep on your left arm, you wake in the morning with angry pins-and-needles from collarbone to fingertip that linger for hours. And even after all those stretches and exercises in the hospital, you still don’t have a full range of motion in your shoulder. When you forget – which is often – and overexert yourself, you’re rewarded with the agonizing sensation of being impaled from scapula to sternum.

Not to mention the overwhelming fatigue, the need to sleep for at least eight hours after the simple task of picking up groceries. Or the way all your shirts have weird stains now because you didn’t realize semi-recent gunshot wounds would just… _leak_ all day long.

It’s easy, under these circumstances, to forget Villanelle. Well, not _forget_ her exactly, but rather banish her entirely from your mind until you have the brainpower to process _all of that_ – which, at this rate, might take years.

“What do you think you’d do,” Kenny asks during one of your weekly takeaway-and-wine nights, “if you saw her again?”

 _Saw who?_ you want to say. But it sounds cheap, even for you. “I’d probably slap her,” you say instead.

“And then what?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” you say, laughing. “What do you think?”

Kenny takes a forkful of food and chews it for a moment, feigning deep thought. You’ve gotten better at reading his expressions these past few months and know he’s really just trying to decide how angry you’ll be at his answer.

“If I’m being honest,” he says eventually. “I think you’d probably jump her bones.”

You scrunch up your face. “All this time and you still can’t say _sex_?”

“It’s too real,” he says. “I don’t want to picture you doing _that_.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t have sex on the first date.”

He laughs in that soft, quiet way of his. “Five quid you’ll kiss her at least.”

Considering the fact you don’t plan on _ever_ seeing her again (and, if you do, you’ll probably full-on murder her), it feels like a safe bet. 

“Fair enough,” you say, raising your glass to clink against his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [You know where to find me!](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/)


	3. II. burn up a basement full of demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nobody would ever believe you’ve killed a man just by looking at you. No one would see you coming._
> 
> Or, Dark Eve finally rises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's going up a bit earlier than I'd expected because I'll be out of town the next few days to take the NCLEX (wish me luck!).
> 
> Starting to get a bit non-linear here... takes place primarily across 3x03, 3x04, and 3x07, but not entirely in that order. Warnings for violence, mentions of suicide (per Kenny's "official" cause of death), references to murder/attempted murder, and a brief mention of (mild) self-harm. OOF.
> 
> Title from "Something to Believe In" by Young the Giant

**anger** /ˈaNGɡər/ _n._

a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism

Someone murders Kenny. Someone pushes him off a building and you have to be the one to cradle his broken, bleeding head until the ambulance shows up. 

Someone tries their very best to kill your husband in a remote village in Poland. Someone shoves a pitchfork through his neck as you watch through a fog of surreality, sinking to your knees on the soft, damp ground. 

Kenny’s death is ruled a suicide. Niko’s survival is termed a medical miracle. It never fails to amaze you who is able to skirt certain death and who is caught like a deer in its headlights.

When Carolyn shares the details of the coroner’s report with you, something cracks. The omnipresent sense of hopelessness that’s been smothering you these past few months like a heavy blanket on a warm summer night finally lifts, only to be replaced by a fury so staggering it takes your breath away.

 _In the field,_ Carolyn had told you, _when someone dies, they can… fuel you. In a good way._

At the time, you’d dismissed it as bullshit. But now… well, now you’re so angry you think you’d tear the world apart if it meant you could bring Kenny back.

You stop working at the restaurant – an effort that had, admittedly, been halfhearted for quite some time now – and start cashing your MI5 pension checks again. _It’s only until we find Kenny’s killer_ , you promise yourself. It’s only so you can get by.

How does grief feel to other people? For you, it feels a little like drowning. You’ve been having this dream lately that you’re lying in a grave and someone’s shoveling dirt onto your chest. At first, you can barely feel the weight but then, at some indefinable point, you suddenly find you’re struggling to breathe. And there’s dirt in your hair, in your teeth. And you want to scream, so you do, and it’s an awful, animal sound that comes out. But it’s no use – the next clump of dirt thumps down, then the next, then the next.

You wake up gasping into the pre-dawn dark. Later, in the kitchen, you throw a mug against the wall so hard it bursts into an infinity of tiny, razor-sharp pieces. Slowly, dreamily, you kneel down to pick one up. At the lightest pressure, it sinks its teeth into your finger and a drop of blood wells up, pearlescent. 

You think about holding it to your own neck, pressing down. You think about walking the early-morning streets and pressing it to someone else’s neck in some dark alley. Nobody would ever believe you’ve killed a man just by looking at you. No one would see you coming.

Somewhere in all of this, Niko goes off the grid. Just checks himself out of rehab and fucks off to Poland (if the program director is to be believed). _Of course_ is your first thought. Even after everything that’s happened, he can’t help but make it all about him.

Is that unfair? It is and it isn’t. Regardless, another item adds itself to your already-impossible to-do list: Find Niko.

It should be easy, but it isn’t. Because he won’t answer your texts or your calls or the smoke signals you’re sure are infused into the steam coming out of your ears. If only Kenny were here, he’d be able to track Niko down in a heartbeat. But Kenny’s dead, so you have to find out _how_ and _who_ and _why_ before you can unravel the whole thing. But you can’t focus on that when your husband’s missing and you don’t have the technological skill yourself to track him down. 

There’s a word for this, you think, something ancient and fanciful. A snake eating its own tail. You try to bite down on the word dancing on the tip of your tongue, and try to text Niko for the twentieth time today, and then you look up to see Villanelle walking up the aisle of the bus you’re taking to the office.

Everything about her screams _confidence_ , oozes bravado. Her movements are slow and cocksure, a hungry thing with its eye on its prey. “Hi, Eve,” she says, so sure of herself, and you realize you’re not afraid. Not anymore. Somebody killed Kenny, and it probably wasn’t her. But she shot you and she ruined your marriage. And in this moment, devoid of rational thought, she is going to make the perfect scapegoat.

And, more than that, you kind of just want to smack that shit-eating grin off her face.

So you do. And then she, shocked from her delusion of power, turns the tables on you and pins you to a grimy, smoky-smelling bus seat. 

“Smell me, Eve,” she says. “What do I smell of to you?”

It’s been a while since you were this close to her face. In the yellowy afternoon light filtering through dirty windows, she looks luminous, ravenous. You find yourself fixated on the constellation of freckles ringing one of her – _wide, alert, catlike_ – eyes. 

_Ouroboros_ , you think, the word you’ve been searching for. She is the beginning and the end, and the beginning of the end.

You are so angry with her, so frustrated by all she’s done and all she’s helped to undo. But more than that, you realize, you’ve missed her terribly. So you kiss her – a promise – and then rear your head back to smack it against hers – a warning. You watch her stumble off the bus and then stand, dazed, on the street corner and wonder which she’d been hoping for.

At home that evening, you find the bear tucked neatly in your bed which _definitely_ wasn’t made when you left this morning. The message stirs something in you, longing and annoyance in equal measure. You think about letting it play on repeat and fantasizing that she’s right here next to you. Instead, you borrow a rusty hammer from the building super and smash it to bits on the floor.

After Niko gets stabbed, everything goes a bit blurry. It’s as though all the frustration and sadness of the past several months has taken on a physical form and smeared itself across the lens of your life, clouding everything with the haze of your wrath.

When the rage finally crystallizes, you find yourself with one foot pressed deep into a woman’s chest, ribs giving way beneath your weight with a sound not unlike firecrackers in damp grass. All of a sudden, everything comes very clearly into focus. You look down into Dasha’s bruised, grimacing face and you _know_ you’re going to kill her.

It is intoxicating, this feeling. You are the harbinger of death, singularly in charge of how and when this human life is going to come to an end. It’s all so fragile, you think, the line between life and death. You’re surprised by how calm you feel.

When the siren starts screaming – too close, much too close – the spell breaks and you collect your things and run, not even bothering to see whether Dasha’s still alive. Not really caring either way.

You think of Villanelle in Rome, saying, _I wanted you to know how it feels_. Killing somebody like that, as your only escape from the narrowing space between a rock and a hard place, had felt like desperation, like a last resort. Killing someone on your own terms feels like finding God and laughing in her face. 

You understand now. Pouring water on a fire only makes it angrier. You are the smoke pricking at the world’s eyes, choking its throat. There is something inside you now that can never be snuffed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to be dramatic, but I love this chapter with all my heart and I'm infinitely proud of it. Hope you're all enjoying so far!!
> 
> I'm [@boxedblondes](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


	4. III. hold on, hold on (someone needs to set her free)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Still, the universe taunts you no matter what path you choose. Are you sure? it asks you over and over again, as it throws another obstacle into your path. How badly do you want it?_
> 
> In which Eve wrestles with the life she has and the life she's choosing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the writers are going to neglect Eve's backstory, then by god am I going to give her one! (even if only for plot purposes)
> 
> Takes place during 3x04-3x07.
> 
> Chapter title from "Susie Save Your Life" by Allie X and Mitski

**bargaining** /ˈbärɡəniNG/ _n._

the act of coming to terms with a transaction, situation, or event in the light of its results

Your mother once said that marriage is nothing more than one endless compromise. At the time, you’d written her off as just another jaded housewife, because you’d been married for five years at that point, and there was nothing negotiatory about it. You were happy with Niko, happy to be a wife. Happy to trade off who cooked (him, usually) and who cleaned (also him) and who paid the bills (him, but only because you were awful at remembering when they were due).

It isn’t until you get involved with MI6 and Carolyn fucking Martens that you really start to understand where your mother was coming from. Because suddenly it’s not playful arguments about where to order takeaway from this week, or lighthearted comments on your lack of tidiness; it’s full-on rows about how you’re putting yourself in danger, and angry barbs at him for going to live with that schoolteacher woman.

How are you supposed to compromise with this? On one hand there’s you, trapped in a life-or-death day job to catch an assassin and dismantle the organization that birthed her. On the other, there’s him, living out his dream of teaching the quadratic formula to children and _still_ trying to sneak around with a younger, ditzier woman – all while berating you for _your_ lifestyle choices. 

There’s just no middle ground, no way to solve this. You can’t go ask the Twelve to please stop trying to kill you because you’ve decided you’re not cut out for this life. And you don’t have a hope in hell of getting it through Niko’s thick skull that some things are more important than getting someone to sleep with you.

Your first thought when you watch him get pitchforked not-quite-to-death in Poland is, _Thank God_. It’s a horrible, horrible thing to think about another person, and you’d never admit it to anyone, but all you feel in that moment is a sense of overwhelming relief. 

(Though, much later, you _will_ admit it to exactly one person. And Villanelle will laugh, say “Eve, you’re a _terrible_ person.” And then she’ll kiss you, as she has every other time, like her life depends on it.)

Shock pins you to the ground for several minutes – too long, any longer and he’d be dead, no question about it. When you’re finally able to convince your muscles to _Move! Now!_ you lurch toward his fallen body on unsteady feet, arms outstretched like a zombie.

 _Please_ , you beg, a simulacrum of prayer. You’ll never be sure what it is you were pleading for, his sudden death or his miraculous survival.

“What were you even doing there?” you ask him later, once he’s stabilized and breathing through a hole in his neck. “Why would somebody want you dead?”

He never answers. Not these questions, nor any others. “Please,” you whisper to him, late at night when he’s been therapeutically tranquilized into a deep sleep. “Just talk to me.”

When you were a child, back in the days when your parents loved you and didn’t yet hate each other, they would sometimes take you to a flea market in New Haven. As an adult, you realize they probably chose this destination because it was a short drive and a cheap weekend activity. Your family was far from wealthy, but five dollars could go a long way toward buying used paperback novels and moth-eaten blankets that smelled like an old lady’s perfume.

By far, your favorite part of the flea market was getting to haggle over prices with the people running the stands. You were a clever child, perceptive for your age since the day you were born, and your mother was always telling you not to talk back to adults. But out there, in the hot sun and surrounded on all sides by the comfortable chaos of vendors and customers, this rule didn’t apply.

You’ve always loved a good argument. You’ve never backed down from a fight, and you don’t plan on starting now. Bureaucracy, you’ve realized, is no different than bargaining. The stakes are higher, sure, but the process is the same.

So you show up at Carolyn’s house, feeling all of eight years old again, and demand she tell you all she knows about Dasha Duzran. You let her believe it’s out of a sense of matrimonial revenge, a desire to find the parties responsible for crippling Niko for life. You know, deep down, that what you _really_ want is to find Villanelle, and you try not to let yourself feel guilty about it.

Because, hell, if Niko’s going to tell you to _piss off forever_ , maybe it’s time you really went off the deep end. Playing the doting wife for so many years has gotten you exactly nowhere, so why not try something new? You can only do the _right_ thing so many times, to exceedingly awful results, before the _wrong_ thing starts to seem more appealing.

Still, the universe taunts you no matter what path you choose. _Are you sure?_ it asks you over and over again, as it throws another obstacle into your path. _How badly do you want it?_

Your life devolves into a series of near-misses. In Barcelona, you taunt Dasha in a bowling alley and beat her at her own game, literally and figuratively. You know Villanelle’s living here, somewhere in the city, but when you find her place – address less-than-legally acquired from Bear with the promise to pay him back with his weight in Tangfastics – it’s cold, dark, and lonely in the way that makes it obvious she hasn’t been here in some time.

You scrounge around in the dumpster one morning, looking for the box for the cake she bought you for your birthday. After you threw it off the roof, someone at the office mentioned offhandedly how expensive it must have been. If you could go back in time, you’d gorge yourself on it, eat cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. As it is, you promise yourself that if – when – you find Villanelle, you’ll thank her graciously and lie about how delicious it was.

In Scotland, you miss her over and over again. On the golf course, on the road, at the train station; each time she slips through your fingers like a handful of water. You make all kinds of deals – with yourself, with the universe, with anyone who’s listening. 

_If I catch up to her, I’ll forgive her for shooting me. I’ll let her do whatever she wants to me. I’ll be a better person somehow. I’ll change._

If this driver finds a shortcut, you can meet up with her at the sixteenth hole.

If you kill Dasha, Villanelle won’t have to kill for her anymore, won’t be under anybody’s thumb but her own.

If you run a little faster, you can make it to the train station in time. You can catch up to the train before it leaves you behind.

It’s only when she spots you, raises a hand in your direction even though it’s too late, that you finally give up the chase. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll find a way.

And then, in Liverpool Street station, your phone rings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts! [@boxedblondes](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/)


	5. IV. here is my day plan, here's my new machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s strange, you think, how quickly your life spiraled from normalcy to chaos. A few whirlwind months saw your marriage falling to pieces, saw you nearly dead a dozen times over, saw you falling halfway in love with a psychopath you’d sworn to kill._
> 
> In which Eve has to lose herself before she finds herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eve be going THROUGH IT in this one.
> 
> Takes place after Rome and during 3x01. Warnings for discussion of depression and a mention of suicidal thoughts.
> 
> Chapter title from "Georgia" by Phoebe Bridgers

**depression** /dəˈpreSH(ə)n/ _n._

a mood disorder or state of emotion marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies

Upon arriving back in the UK, you bought a new phone – something you had always needed in the past, a lifeline for your job. Now, however, you have a grand total of three numbers in your contacts list: Kenny, the front desk at Niko’s rehab center, and the number for the restaurant so you can call in for your (semi-frequent) sick days.

In reality, those are the mornings you’re either too hungover or too in pain to even think about getting out of bed. Or sometimes, you just wake up feeling sick and exhausted in some vague, indefinable way, and the mere thought of sitting in a hot kitchen for eight hours straight is simply more than you can bear.

You wonder sometimes if you should see a shrink. They tried to make you see a therapist in the hospital, but you outright refused until, eventually, they gave up. “Trauma can feel difficult to talk about,” one of the nurses had said to you once, with genuine kindness.

 _I’m not worried about my trauma_ , you want to tell her. _I’m worried once I tell some doctor I axe-murdered a man two months ago, I’ll be stuck in here for life_.

In New Malden, healed up (enough) and fed up with living off MI5’s charity, your aunt sets you up with a job at her friend’s restaurant. Nepotism has its perks, and the friend offers to pay you generously to wait on tables. 

“No,” you tell her, firm but polite as you can muster. “I need something that will let me sit down most of the day. Because of my back.” It feels like a weak excuse, but you’ve discovered that most people are squeamish about debilitating health concerns. One brief mention of your injury is enough to open all kinds of doors.

So you end up working in the kitchen, prepping ingredients and making mandu. It’s less money than a waitress job, but at least here, no one expects you to put on your customer service smile. The work is nonstop, tedious, and you find yourself sinking deep into the monotony like a warm bath. This is what you need most: something to fill your days, something to stave off the boredom and hopelessness that waits for you behind every corner. 

It’s strange, you think, how quickly your life spiraled from normalcy to chaos. A few whirlwind months saw your marriage falling to pieces, saw you nearly dead a dozen times over, saw you falling halfway in love with a psychopath you’d sworn to kill.

And where did it leave you? Where did you end up? Here, wrist-deep in a cold chicken carcass. Here, washing your hair with dish soap in a pathetic effort to stave off a trip to the shops. Here, wine-drunk and dizzy in your long-unwashed bedsheets. How does one ever manage to dig themselves out of a hole this big?

You could end it, sure, buy a gun or find a building tall enough to jump from – there’s so many options available to you. But every time you consider it seriously, the _what-if_ s pop up like weeds.

What if someone tries to stop you? What if Villanelle shows up at your door to apologize and then whisks you away on a thrilling adventure? What if Niko wants to give it another go? What if you fail utterly and end up back in a hospital, forced into another half-dozen weeks of recovery – or worse, end up comatose or paralyzed or otherwise crippled for the rest of the life you didn’t plan on having?

It’s easier to just keep going, even if only by a slim margin. If things can always get worse – _have_ gotten worse, repeatedly – then who’s to say they can’t also get better? Not you, certainly.

What you miss, more than anything, is having a sense of purpose. In university, you devoured your textbooks, thrilled by case studies of puzzlingly deranged assassins and murderers. If you knew the most, you reasoned, then you could be the _best._ And if you were the best, then maybe one day you’d stop the next Aileen Wuornos. 

At MI5, even stuck behind a desk and feeling entirely useless some 260 days out of the year, there was always the sense that you were doing _something_ , that the big things happening at some much higher level were in some small way influenced by your careful filing of paperwork and organization of protection detail for people who’d be dead in a day without it.

And later, chasing Villanelle before you even knew she was Villanelle. What you would give to go back to those days, with all their mystery and danger. After so many years of doing jack shit career-wise, the thrill of tracking an assassin who didn’t even legally _exist_ was a drug like no other. Stuck in the depressing, muddy rut your life has become, those days sometimes feel like a fever dream. Without the scars and their unwavering physical proof, you might believe the whole thing never happened.

You have a dream about Villanelle once, a few months after getting back from Rome. In it, you wake from a seasick tossing-and-turning kind of sleep to see her sitting at the foot of your bed. She looks tired in a way you’ve never seen her before, not even when she was covered in bruises and pulsing blood over your hands. She looks small and hollow. She looks like she’s been on the run from something terrible for a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” she says, reaching out to hold your hand with her long, cool fingers. The sound of her voice after all this time is a burning slap to the face. “I never meant to make you suffer.”

She looks so heartbreakingly sad you can’t help but believe her. You search for something, anything to say that will smooth away the lines around her eyes, but you can’t think of a single word. She stares at you for a heartbeat longer, then lets go of your hand.

“Go back to sleep,” she says.

You close your eyes and wake up to a room without her in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok but like... was it just a dream 👀?
> 
> [tumblr <3](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/)


	6. V. tell myself it's a new day until it's true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The most important part of a story is the end._
> 
> Or, Eve gets the girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to get soft because they are in love for real!! This last chapter is gloriously self-indulgent (by which I mean I really leaned into the non-linear thing). I hope you all enjoy it <3
> 
> Takes place during 3x07-3x08. No warnings for this one!
> 
> Chapter title from "When I'm Over You" by LP

**acceptance** /əkˈseptəns/ _n._

a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a negative or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it or protest it

The most important part of a story is the end. Not everyone knows this but, then again, most people don’t even realize they’re living through something that will one day be a story until it’s over. 

You used to feel like you were spending your whole life looking for the beginning ( _a_ beginning, _any_ beginning) of whatever it was that would become your magnum opus, your raison d’etre, your calling. What, you wondered over and over, was your purpose?

Tonight, you stand on a bridge – your face towards a future as empty and indecipherable as the deep void of space, your back towards the thing you least want to turn away from (and, paradoxically, the one should most want to) – and realize that this is the last and most important turning point. This story, your story, girl-meets-girl-chases-girl-nearly-dies-finds-girl-again, is at its end. Nothing matters but what you choose right now. 

So what are you going to do?

Because Villanelle’s an annoying prick when she wants to be, you’re the one who has to cross the distance and walk back to where she’s standing, patient and smiling. Despite your better judgment, you can’t be angry with her when she looks like that, soft and happy and a whole lot of other things you’d never thought to describe her as before.

“Forget something?” she asks.

“What?”

“Well, you came back this way.” Villanelle makes a show of looking around herself. “I thought we agreed to walk and not look back.”

“First of all,” you say. “ _I_ never agreed to anything. And second, I’m not the only one who turned around.”

Villanelle shrugs. “I heard you stop walking. Thought maybe you’d jumped in after all.”

You open your mouth to comment on the implausibility of her just _hearing you stop walking_ from halfway across the Tower Bridge, but that soft little smile overtakes her face again and the words dry up on your tongue. The last time someone looked at you like that… God, you can’t even remember when it would have been. Probably Niko, probably ages ago.

“You know you drive me absolutely crazy,” you say.

“Is that a good thing?”

You give her a smile of your own, and it feels like your face is cracking open along long-forgotten fault lines. “Right now, you’re the only good thing in my life.”

At your words, she looks down shyly. Through the sodium glow of the street lamps, you can see tears pooling like diamonds on her cheeks. Everything feels weighty, significant. You think of the look in her eyes just before you both turned away from each other, bittersweet and nostalgic like she was already looking back on the moment as a memory. You think of her body pressed close to you as you swayed uncertainly around the ballroom floor.

You think about walking away – this time for real, this time forever – and force yourself to sit with the possibility for a moment, let it curdle your stomach. You think about asking her to stay instead, and revel in the way electricity kisses a path up your spine.

“Tell me something,” you say.

She looks up, at once concerned and laser-focused. “Of course.”

Your hands are shaking, every part of you alive and humming. “Did you mean what you said in Rome? In the ruins? I didn’t believe you, but I think I might now.”

“What did I say,” she asks, careful. _I’m not going to make this easy on you_.

“That you love me. That I’m yours.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I thought I did, but you were right. I didn’t know what love was.” She shakes her head. “It’s not possession.”

“No,” you say. “It’s not.”

Villanelle closes her eyes and you can see the dark circles beneath them, shadows haunting her face. “I don’t want to possess you,” she says. “Not anymore.”

“So what do you want?”

“I want to love you,” she says, fixing you again with her stare. “The kind of love that’s devotion.”

“I want that too,” you say.

“Yeah?”

You nod. “I love you.” You’re surprised by how easily it comes out, how gentle. “I tried for a really long time not to, but I do.”

She smiles at you and it’s sweeter than the sun breaking out after a thunderstorm.

-

Here is an interesting fact: most high-speed trains in the UK have a maximum speed of 200 km/h. Here’s another: the absolute fastest recorded human speed is 44.64 km/h. You, of course, cannot run _nearly_ this fast. And yet, some recklessly animalistic part of your brain decides to give it a try anyway.

You don’t even think about it. You just… run after a fucking train, like you’re the main character in the third act of a romantic comedy. _Heroes only get the girl in Hollywood_ , Carolyn had said. If only she could see you now.

Villanelle catches sight of you and raises a hand in a gesture that could me anything: _Goodbye, Hello, It’s so good to see you again, How does it feel to catch up to me at the last possible second? How does it feel to watch me leave?_ That tiny action stops you in your tracks, forces you to stand still and realize the futility of what you’re doing. You raise a hand in return, but by then she’s already gone.

You really don’t know how much longer you can do this. You’re tired of chasing her to the ends of the earth, only for her to slip away over some uncharted precipice. Anybody with half a rational mind would tell you to give up, beg you to stop running in circles. But god knows your own mind hasn’t been operating sensibly for the better part of a year at least.

What is there to do when faced with an impossible, inevitable choice? You don’t know how much longer you can burn bridges and raze the earth just for the possibility of five minutes alone in a room with her. But then again, what if this is the last time you have to? What if this is the time that, finally, you both stop running?

After all, it’s a simple matter of giving into yourself. It always has been.

So you get a train back to London and stare out the window at the dimming landscape. The world blurs by – farmland, houses, a glimpse of the sea – and you mentally construct a maths problem. _If train X left the station one hour before train Y, how long will Villanelle want to wait for you? How much of a head start will she have, if she decides to leave?_

The calculations are nonviable, no solution to be had. But at the end of the day, it comes down to this: Your old life, the one without her in it, is simply not one you want to have. And so you will continue the chase, whatever it takes. You will find her. You will have her close to you. Anything else, whatever follows, is tangential.

–

With sunset long over, the night is cold and starless. You can count on one hand the number of times you’ve felt quite this knocked off-center. When Villanelle sent you a text two days after her short, cryptic phone call to you at the train station, you assumed wholeheartedly you would be walking into a trap. Unsurprisingly to probably anyone but you, you were absolutely at peace with this knowledge and ready to show up anyway, bells on and clanging up a storm.

But instead of a warehouse or creepy back alley, she brought you to a ballroom. _Of all places to die_ , you’d thought, walking in the door. And then… Jesus, how would you explain this to anyone? 

You envision telling this story to Bill, to Kenny, to Elena. The people who recognized your crazy and still, to varying degrees, encouraged it. _So we talked, and she cried a bit, and then we just… got up and danced_. You imagine the looks on their faces, no doubt three shades of horrified but not surprised. Bill would probably go on to congratulate you on making a move. Honestly, they all would.

How do you make a commitment to an idea, a persona? How do you tie yourself to an ever-evolving maelstrom? 

You ponder this all evening, the reality of what you’re inches away from doing. Making a fool of yourself at the betting site, having your brief tussle with Konstantin, sitting next to Villanelle on some strange man’s couch, your leg pressed against hers... _I am doing this_ , you think all the while, and force yourself to give intention to the words. _I am choosing her. Over everything_.

Villanelle’s arm settles over your shoulders and you try not to shiver at the pressure. Carolyn shoots the other man instead of Konstantin and you flinch against Villanelle’s steadying hand on your knee. And then, when it’s all said and done, you run out into the night with no particular direction in mind.

It’s a test of the vainest sort. Villanelle will follow after you, you know this. But still your heart races double-time, pounding out a _what-if, what-if, what-if_ rhythm. What if she doesn’t? What if, even though you’ve happily resigned yourself to a life with her in it, she hasn’t decided to do the same?

But, no. You know she’ll follow you. You _know_. And, of course, she does.

And then she has to go and ruin the whole exercise by trying to convince you to walk away from one another forever. As if that’s what you’ve been hinting at. As if _When I think of my future, I just see your face over and over again_ has some other, less blatantly romantic meaning. As if by _Help me make it stop_ she thought you meant – what? Her? This? 

All you want is to stop running. And yet, here you are – giving in, taking the easy way out – walking away from her once again.

It’s just that walking away seems like the logical choice, the decision any normal, sane adult in your position would make. It would be _so easy_ to go back to the life you were living before Carolyn gave you confirmation that Villanelle was still out there, alive and working. It would be a slow suicide, that life, boring and painfully safe.

Without really thinking about it, your pace slows to a gentle stop. _This is it_ , you think. It’s time to make the decision that will dictate the rest of your life. That’s it, that’s all that matters. Are you going to keep walking, or are you going to turn around and run to her?

Of all things, the image that pops into your head is of Villanelle staring out at a dance floor full of smiling couples. _They seem happy,_ she had said, voice soft and wistful. _Carefree_. _I want to feel like that_. You think of her resting her head against yours as you swayed together, the way you could feel her smiling even though you couldn’t see her face.

For one perfect moment, you had felt truly happy, wildly carefree. You want to feel like that always. You want to live a life without regrets. Heaven knows you’ve already lived enough years chock-full of them.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to turn around. You hope she’s waiting for you when you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all!! I've loved writing this fic and it's been wonderful to read all of your comments/feedback on each chapter. Please let me know what you thought of this last one :)
> 
> [tumblr <3](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/)


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